3/12/2018

New Rep's "Ripe Frenzy": Topical Paradise?

As
one approached the venue for the play Ripe Frenzy by
Jennifer Barclay, one
was greeted by a series of theater posters on the walls of prior
productions of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Then
one was handed a program with the phrase “striking topical drama”
on its cover, and inside a note by Director Bridget Kathleen O'Leary
referencing the shootings at Columbine and other schools. With regard
to the setting, the program noted that the action was to take place
in the town of Tavistown, New York in 2017, at the high school
theater and the surrounding woods. One was tantalized by the
ambiguously portentous admonition that “time is slippery here”.
And indeed it was to be. We were certainly not in Kansas, Toto.
This latest choice as the National New Play Network Rolling World
Premiere, a co-production by New Rep Theatre and the Boston Center
for American Performance, was beginning to feel more than a bit
threatening and not about a small town paradise it may have first
seemed.

Produced at Boston University's Studio ONE (from
February 24th to March 11th), in an
intermission-less fast-paced ninety minutes, this was a stunner from
the first appearance of the main character Zoe (Veronika Duerr), as we were
informed by her that she played the role of The Stage Manager decades
ago in one of the school's biennial productions of “Our Town”,
and she is now, among other things, (such as town historian), the
real life stage manager of the fortieth production of the work (which
she mysteriously refers to as the thirty-ninth-and-two-thirds
production, which is the heaviest hint of what's to come); she is
also mother of the show's projectionist. The director of this
version of “Our Town” is Miriam (Stacy Fischer), also a mother,
and helping out is another mother, Felicia (Samantha Richert). There
are also teenagers, Matt (Henry B. Gardner), Bethany (Reilly
Anspaugh), Hadley (also played by Anspaugh) and Bryan James McNamara
(also played by Gardner).

Under O'Leary's taut direction, the cast, without
exception, was stellar, most notably Duerr (who impressed earlier
this season in SpeakEasy Stage's Men in Boats). Her opening
lengthy monologue as Zoe was a true acting tour de force. The
creative elements were also on point, from the Scenic Design by
Afsoon Pajoufar, to the Sound Design by David Reiffel, the Costume
Design by Annalynn Luu, and most especially the work of Projections
Designer Jared Mezzocchi, who described his contribution as
“mediaturgy” (the importance of which might even be a spoiler).

As the plot developed, we became more aware of what Zoe
meant when she noted that “logic is calming” and that “positivity
is a choice we make”; so is denial, expressed by her: “we must
remind ourselves of the goodness in life”, and the fact that two
seemingly opposite things can both be true. Love and horror
co-exist. Ripe Frenzy is a much darker (and maybe more
truthful) take on small town life than that of Wilder. To elaborate
on these themes would be to give in to the temptation to clarify some
issues that would be unfair spoilers. Many people have relatively
benign and romanticized remembrances of Wilder's original,
conveniently forgetting how even he had his bittersweet moments. In
his preface to the published version of his work, he spoke of how
theatergoers were beginning to seek plays that were “soothing”;
while he sought to demonstrate “a value above all price for the
smallest events in our daily life”, he at the same time utilized
the words “hundreds', “thousands” and “millions” many
times, to assert that individuality is inner; it lies within. It's
the obverse of what Playwright Barclay clearly sees, the town from
the other side of the tracks.

Were Barclay to portray the character of Emily, she
would still have her bemoaning as to how one never notices another in
a cloud of ignorance and blindness. This Our Town has
morphed into the current reality of what might now be entitled Every
Town.